The youth enthusiasm gap

9/26/12 12:31 AM EDT

The Chicago Tribune picks up on a trend in President Obama's city - lower registration among younger voters than existed four years ago, an issue that has bigger potential implications outside the Illinois state lines for the Democratic president's campaign:

"It means that the younger voters just aren't as taken with the election as they were with the last one," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Washington-based Pew Research Center. "This is an important Democratic and Obama constituency, and should give pause to them."...

...David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, argued that younger Americans are less excited not only about Obama, but politics overall.

In his classrooms, Yepsen — the former point man on presidential politics for the Des Moines Register — said he has found that students are less focused on politics because they are "just trying to keep their heads above water."

Kohut indicated he has data that will back up the broader assertion about younger voters, but it matches what has become clear anecdotally and in other surveys throughout the last year - it is tough, for a variety of reasons, to keep younger voters engaged in the political process.

Whether that ends up mattering for Obama this cycle remains to be seen, but the excitement among younger voters helped propel the president four years ago in the caucuses and primaries, and then in the general election. Like any other piece of Obama's base, it's one he can't afford to see shrink too much from last time.